


Youth's a stuff will not endure

by sinkauli



Category: Tam Lin - Pamela Dean
Genre: F/M, Fae & Fairies, Friendship/Love, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:14:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28028346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinkauli/pseuds/sinkauli
Summary: "Is Robin a clown?" said Molly. "He seems very sober to me."
Relationships: Janet Carter/Thomas Lane, Robert Armin & Thomas Lane, Robert Armin/Molly DuBois
Comments: 7
Kudos: 32
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Youth's a stuff will not endure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [middlecyclone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlecyclone/gifts).



I've seen so many that the Queen got.

She never got Will, not for want of trying, but he saw her coming and married his fierce Anne just in time. The only other time I've seen the Queen so displeased, disgusted even, was very recently when she failed to get Thomas. That, too, was because he saw her coming. So did I, and so did Janet after we'd more or less tricked her into seeing clearly. I ought to regret that trickery but I don't: it was the right thing in the end.

Taking me and Rob and Nick was the Queen's revenge on Will. It seemed to be so much fun at first. Hell, it _was_ so much fun, dilly-dallying in the meadows like fauns. Such abandon. We were so young, children still, thinking ourselves men because our bodies were grown and our desires were boundless.

I was a fool.

(Will saw that, and made me play fools.)

We were the lucky ones, Nick and Rob and I. Taken as toys, not as a sacrifice like poor Nathan was. _His_ lady-love got cold feet. I was the piper then as now, drowning out the sound of what I knew was happening out of my sight.

I don't know how many times I played the pipes on All Hallows' Eve. Frankly, I don't want to know. Learning to play the pipes may have been the best thing I ever did. The Ceòl Mór is uncompromising, sobering, it throws a man back upon himself.

We ran with the court as if we were part of it, though everybody knew --we ourselves, most of all!-- that it was only play. We were players after all. That made it easy to keep up appearances outside the court: have our eccentricity accepted, hide that we did not age as other men did. Until we had to disappear, fake our own death, start over somewhere else. All part of the play.

It remained fun for some years, some decades even. Perhaps a hundred years, while the world changed around us. Centuries on end are too long. I know now why the Queen is doing what she does: to allay boredom. It's been millennia for her. And she is doomed to it forever, while I still have hope to break away, to grow old at Molly's side and die at my appointed time.

Ah, Molly! A clearing in the dim woods, a wellspring on dry rocks. She will bear no nonsense. I would have been desperate like Rob, unreliable like Nick, but for her cool sanity.

I have loved so many times, lost my love so many times. It was the Queen I loved first, as happens to all of us, and it still pains me that she is so near and yet so unattainable. Oh, if she wants you, she will have you; but you can never have her. She has minions, acolytes, admirers, favourites, paramours, pets and playthings even, but no partners.

She must be so lonely. I refuse to pity her, though, she is so merciless as to be beyond pity. What happened to her that made her bring this on herself is lost in the mists of history.

At least the three of us stayed together. She used us as bait, of course, to attract people to her company who already had the same ways of thinking. The theatre has always been good for that, and places of learning, and wars. Those who seek relief from war think that the court offers a way out of death and despair. Little do they know.

There were some good times. My apprenticeship with Ashbee, learning to work precious metals. He called me haunted but praised my aptitude and skill. I wish I could have shown him the flower necklaces I made -- lilies and roses, innocence for Molly, passion for Janet. That Janet's roses would be even more apt than I thought when I made them I didn't know at the time. Nor did Nick, or Thomas.

I thought I was going to lose Nick. And then it became clear that I was going to lose Thomas instead. I'd have lost him eventually anyway to the ravages of old age or sickness or anything that plagues mortals unless we could get him into the court --we did that with John, who has all of Thomas' looks but none of his charm-- but that didn't make it any better: no calluses on that part of my being, never, only flesh rubbed raw.

It's hard work to love Thomas. Not self-evident and easy like loving Molly. It hurts, even now that he is in no danger for a while. Not because of Janet: there are so many ways to love and they can all exist together. I have learned, in all those years, to take only what people were willing to give, and never to claim what belonged by rights to another.

Living with these --children, I must call them, like I was when I was first seduced-- lets me be young again for a while, but not in the same way that they are. I have so much past and can't conceive of a future that's in any way different from what I have already seen; they have so much future and know that most things will be new until they settle into adulthood.

Except for sheer age I do not have what it takes to be their wise old mentor. I shall be one of their company, Molly's lover, Thomas' trusted companion, Janet's faithful friend. Their watchful ally, their sentry to guard against the Queen's next attempt. We have seven years to prepare. We will all be older then, they will all be grown. She will not take Thomas that time: the laws that bind us also bind her and she has no more power over him. She may attempt to take revenge and try for Janet and the child, which is what we need to guard against most of all.

I pray I may be wise enough to play the fool.

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Twelfth Night, Act 2, Scene 3, last line of Feste's song.
> 
> poor Nathan: [Nathan Field](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Field) (1587-1620), playwright and actor
> 
> Ceòl Mór: [listen to some of it here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i2brqPhAsQ)
> 
> Ashbee: [Charles Robert Ashbee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Robert_Ashbee) (17 May 1863-23 May 1942), architect and designer, prime mover of the Arts and Crafts movement


End file.
